Girl Guides are now GIRL ONLY! - Thread 2

[CohensDiamondTeeth]

I hope no one minds me starting thread 2, I clicked post on my last reply but the thread had filled up.

There was some interesting discussion had, and on the last page @LostMySocks posted that she was thinking of sending a positive email to HQ, which I think sounds like a great idea. Maybe those who support this move could do the same? It would show Girl Guides that people are paying attention.

Link to the first thread here: Girl Guides are now GIRL ONLY! | Mumsnet

The first post of the thread was so good I'm just going to copy and paste it here too. Girl Guides statement is incredibly begrudging in tone.

@Iamwhoiamwhoareyou · Yesterday 14:41

Following April's supreme court ruling, the Girl Guides have FINALLY made a statement and will remain GIRLS ONLY - Finally closing the door on admitting trans members or allowing BOYS to invade female only spaces/camp (which, would be done without informing parents that their daughter would be sharing a room with a biological male!) - I have a previous post in feminism chat for anyone wanting to read the previous thread on this

EMAIL RECEIVED HOT OFF THE PRESS 5 MIN AGO -

As the parent of a young member in Girlguiding, following April’s Supreme Court decision relating to sex and gender, we wanted to give you an update. Many organisations across the country have been facing complex decisions about what it means for girls and women and for the wider communities affected, including us.

Girlguiding’s governing charity documents set out that the membership and people who benefit from our organisation are girls and women. In April, the Supreme Court ruled that girls and women are defined in the Equality Act 2010 by their biological sex at birth.
Following detailed considerations, expert legal advice and input from senior members, young members and our Council, Girlguiding’s Board of Trustees has made the difficult decision that Girlguiding must change Girlguiding must change, following the Supreme Court’s ruling.

From today, 2 December, it is with a heavy heart that we are announcing trans girls and young women will no longer be able to join Girlguiding. This is a decision we would have preferred not to make, and we know that this may be upsetting for members of our community.

There will be no immediate changes for current young members but more information will be shared next week.

Most adult roles, including unit helpers, district helpers and administrative support, are already open to all, so we are confident that no volunteers will have to leave the organisation.

Girlguiding believes strongly in our value of inclusion, and we will continue to support young people and adults in marginalised groups. Over the next few months, we'll explore opportunities to champion this value and actively support young people who need us.

You can find our full statement and updated policy on our website.

We are proud to be the UK’s largest youth organisation dedicated to girls and is focused on creating an equal world for girls and young women. For over 100 years, we have been a welcoming space for all girls to have new experiences, support their communities, build friendships and grow their confidence.

While Girlguiding may feel a little different going forward, these core aims and principles will always be the same. We remain committed to treating everyone with dignity and respect, particularly those from marginalised groups that have felt the biggest impact of this decision.

If you have any immediate questions, we have our special support team in place, to give volunteers, parents and carers the best support we can. We are asking Girlguiding HQ, trading and country/region staff to refer any volunteer or parent who has questions about this announcement. Details below.

Contact [email protected] or 020 7532 3970
All calls/emails will be confidential, and the service will be open 24hrs, 7 days a week.
Find out more, including how this team will handle personal data.

Denise Wilson (Chair of Trustees), Felicity Oswald (CEO) and Tracy Foster (Chief Guide)

disgust is the right word. I don’t use it lightly either. Their statement yesterday was disgusting. The right result in terms of begrudgingly listening to the law, but the mealy mouthed way they apologise for doing the right thing? Just Fuck Off GirlGuides.

Well there was this guy who was a Commissioner overseeing Rainbows, Brownies, Guides and Rangers in Southwell, Nottinghamshire in 2021.

Girlguides launch probe into trans Commissioner, 58, over saucy dominatrix-style picture | Daily Mail Online

Sully. Here is the thread.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4409650-To-ask-you-to-see-who-girl-guides-support?page=1

Wasn’t there two women who also complained who were reported to the police for their complaints?

GG have been anything but kind to children in allowing this to happen. This piece by a clinical psychologist is very informative about the psychological damage that's done to young children when the adults around them pretend they're really the opposite sex.

It's well worth reading:

https://www.transgendertrend.com/childhood-social-transition/

I don't want to paraphrase and accidentally misrepresent what that poster has said but it's worth a read of their posts via advanced search, the username is new (assuming a NC specifically for that thread), and she only posted a handful of times.

Yes exactly!

The child could have been indicating an interest in anything, from a colour, a thing, an item of clothing, an activity, something in the background behind the female character, or a whole range of different things that could have been easily misinterpreted.

Your DS not liking "funny" stuff, and the little girl who thought "I want to be a boy" was conveying her desire for a bunk bed are great examples of flawed associations.

I'm also highly sceptical that a child who can't even talk yet has the complicated thought process necessary to see a female person in a book or cartoon and to identify as the sex of that character.

Yes!

Insanity!

I'm not asking for "cheques from society", all I'm asking for is understanding.

I saw a trans woman on public transport the other day, I observed a lot of staring at "the other". It felt slightly threatening. I hope it'll be different for my child when she comes of age, if her gender remains as it is.

My child consistently, persistently and insistently asserted herself as girl, often to the point of great distress. She constantly corrected us. We pushed back but she persisted. This occurred for over a year before her 'social' transition. Please don't make assumptions that we guided her to this.

She may well be autistic, we are on the list for a referral (years now). To my mind this is just another part of the puzzle, the brilliant unique person that she is, not a simple explanation to dismiss her 'gender dysphoria'.

Because she isn't - at the moment - dysphoric (ie: unhappy). She seems happy in her body and who she is, though this decision is the probably the first of many societal knocks.

She knows what her sex is, she knows what her gender is. Her existence isn't the problem but she is being made to feel that it is. That's why I mentioned the suicide rates earlier - I have spent much of my adult life battling quite severe mental illness. In supporting in her, in making her feel safe and listened to - at home and in our community - I hope she can have an easier path than the many trans people before her who have been ostracised by society.

(Sidenote - if anyone has links that debunk the widely quoted 30-50% suicide attempt statistic for trans people, I'd be very interested to read. It's hard to get reliable statistics on suicide, much less on a marginalised community.)

It's not an easy path, far from it. I suppose we don't always get to choose our paths through life.

I probably won't post much more today as I need to get on with work but I hope you all have a good day, thanks for the discussion.

"all I'm asking for is understanding"

You allowed your child to access a female only group when they were not female. Did you ever think of the female children there and what they needed? And have you ever considered the pressure that those female children at Brownies felt to affirm your child when your child is a male child? Did those female children ever have the freedom to say that your child was a boy and that he should not have been there? Or use male language for him? Didn't you say you were a leader there?

Thanks for the thoughtful follow-up, Solid. It must be difficult reading these contrasting viewpoints in relation to your child. I know that there are children whose transgenderism is apparent from a very early age, and who persist throughout life - I've talked about this with medical professionals who have treated them. But I also know that these professionals say that this is exceptionally, vanishingly rare, and that there's limited understanding of why it happens. In this context, with young children so sensitive to and confused by social cues - and autistic children so desperate to find and cling to reassuring patterns and rules - I think it's vitally important for parents who see their child as trans to be aware of the messages they may be sending, intentionally or not, from birth onwards.

It really does start that early, and is utterly insidious. It can be so hard to resist that instinct to greet the male newborn as a "big, strong boy" and the girl as a "pretty little thing". I mean, FFS, I find myself doing it with the family cats - "Go get him, Paws!" versus "Aw, poor little Twinkle!" kinda thing. And I'm thoroughly GC and a lifelong feminist.

I'm not saying this is necessarily what's happening in your case, but just wish there was wider understanding of how messaging about gender suffuses our world and how damaging and limiting it can be. The current ideology celebrates as progressive attitudes that I think are regressive and pretty destructive. I feel so sad to look back on the progress made in the 80s - girls with short hair, boys with long hair, gender-neutral clothing - and then see virtually every secondary school-aged female now with her perfectly coiffed long hair and prematurely made-up face. And then to know that the odd one out with the short hair is likely to be assumed to be non-binary or trans?! What it means to be female / a girl has been squashed right back down, corset-style, into a single, stereotypically feminine shape. And we've done this to them, somehow - we built this society.

It's devastating, tbh.

Well the WI has just announced that they are banning men/transwomen from their organisation as of April next year.
It would seem that the lawyers are beginning to get through to the people in charge of women's and girls single sex charities the full legal and personal consequences for the board members of allowing boys/men to join 😃

How as a pre-verbal child did they indicate to you that they identified with female characters? You'd point and they'd do what? Was there anything that lead to you pointing in the first place? Do you think that indication could have been misinterpreted?

Could you give us an idea of how old your child was at various stages please? So we know as far as you are concerned this started before your child could talk. Then when slightly older(?) they got very distressed when they said asserted they were a girl and were corrected. Now at pre-pubescent age they understand the difference between sex and gender identity. Could you expand on this at all?

When your child was younger and getting distressed when told they weren't a girl, did you seek help from anyone, and if so what sort, what recommendations were made, and if so did you follow them and how did that go?

I'm sorry, I did warn you I have so so many questions! 😅

Thank you for being open to a discussion on this. I think that is rare and brave because, as you've already said yourself, you know most people will disagree with you.

Edited to add that's another bit of great news!

Oh I wonder if that's thanks to the husband of an FWR poster?

An update to the WI Announcement thread. My DH just got a reply to his application to join them. | Mumsnet

DH -v- The WI, Thread 2 | Mumsnet

The policy was trans inclusive - it now isn't. No I didn't consider all of your points because they don't seem rational to me, they come from a place of fear.

I was pretty appalled to read that they were announcing this ‘with heavy hearts’.

That's great news, for all the reasons outlined on this thread. I'll never understand or get over the resistance these female-run orgs have shown to this. And the glee that so many males have shown in their resistance - like our visitors early this morning. It's really brought home to me that women's rights are very vulnerable indeed.

There's such complacency now ("We've made it, we have equality! We don't need female-only spaces for children!") and such ignorance and naivety about how terrifyingly recent the gains we've made are, and how limited they are still.

I really think that one of the biggest indicators of how sexist and misogynist our society still is, is young women's lack of awareness of this. It's sidelined in school and normalised in society to the point that they don't even see it.

That we're not proactively promoting awareness of this to the degree we are issues surrounding race, sexuality and gender (that people are far more likely to deny it even being an issue in a way they don't in those other areas!) - to the extent that women and girls are now denied even a noun of their own to advocate for themselves, reduced to using "female" to be explicit - says to me that sexism and misogyny are the most enduring and insidious of all prejudices. What signifies oppression more clearly than persuading the oppressed group that, not only are they not oppressed, but that it's Right and Good for them to prostrate themselves at the altar of the oppressor group's demands, including offering up their only words?

There are quite a number of papers and articles that have been written about the misuse of suicide attempts and suicidality around gender identities.

Here are a few, but I will go and see if I can find the one which shows that the figures are not different when you look at the statistics for the co-morbidity conditions that those who declare they have a transgender identity have. But here are some that I have found:

This is a report by Professor Louis Appleby, University of Manchester, Department of Health and Social Care adviser on suicide prevention:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/review-of-suicides-and-gender-dysphoria-at-the-tavistock-and-portman-nhs-foundation-trust/review-of-suicides-and-gender-dysphoria-at-the-tavistock-and-portman-nhs-foundation-trust-independent-report

Summary of conclusions

1. The data do not support the claim that there has been a large rise in suicide in young gender dysphoria patients at the Tavistock.
2. The way that this issue has been discussed on social media has been insensitive, distressing and dangerous, and goes against guidance on safe reporting of suicide.
3. The claims that have been placed in the public domain do not meet basic standards for statistical evidence.
4. There is a need to move away from the perception that puberty-blocking drugs are the main marker of non-judgemental acceptance in this area of health care.
5. We need to ensure high quality data in which everyone has confidence, as the basis of improved safety for this at risk group of young people.

Here is another review:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-022-02287-7

Suicide by Clinic-Referred Transgender Adolescents in the United Kingdom
Michael Biggs. January 2022

Even the Tavistock was upfront that suicide was extremely rare on their website

https://archive.is/2DzUk

Marcus Evans wrote one of the first papers about this misuse of suicide :

www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bjpsych-bulletin/article/freedom-to-think-the-need-for-thorough-assessment-and-treatment-of-gender-dysphoric-children/F4B7F5CAFC0D0BE9FF3C7886BA6E904B

Many interesting links but worth remembering this:

Evans said: During the 1980s, I led a parasuicide service in King's College Hospital, London, and treated a number of individuals who had self-harmed or attempted suicide after gender reassignment surgery. These patients had a history of serious and enduring mental illness and/or a personality disorder. Having developed a late-onset gender dysphoria, they were often angry at the loss of their biological sexual functioning and aggrieved with psychiatric services, which they felt had failed to examine their motivations for requesting reassignment surgery and/or to adequately investigate their psychological difficulties. A common theme in their presentations was a belief that physical treatments would remove or resolve aspects of themselves that caused them psychic pain. When the medical intervention failed to remove these psychological problems, the disappointment led to an escalation of self-harm and suicidal ideation, as resentment and hatred towards themselves were acted out in relation to their bodies.

And

Robert Winston also highlights how often medical transition may not meet the expectations of patients:

www.transgendertrend.com/professor-robert-winston-joins-transgender-debate-share-concerns-young-children/

‘He said 40 per cent of people who undergo vaginal reconstruction surgery experience complications as a result, and many need further surgery, and 23 per cent of people who have their breasts removed “feel uncomfortable with what they've done”. He added: “What I've been seeing in a fertility clinic are the long-term results of often very unhappy people who now feel quite badly damaged. “One has to consider when you're doing any kind of medicine where you're trying to do good not harm, and looking at the long-term effects of what you might be doing, and for me that is really a very important warning sign.” He added that the long-term effects of taking hormones “are likely to affect reproductive function”.’

Here is a parent responding to the much publicised Trevor Project self selected survey

https://genspect.org/a-parent-responds-to-time-article-on-poorly-designed-trevor-project-survey/

here are other links

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666560325001082

Intersectional analysis of suicide risk among transgender and non-binary people

Highlights

The study investigates variation in suicidality among transgender people across intersecting social identities and positions.

Thirty-percent of experienced suicidal ideation and 4.2 % reported a suicide attempt in the past year.

Younger transgender people exhibited higher rates of suicidal ideation and attempts overall.

Respondents with lower educational attainment and disabled people with higher education reported more suicidal ideation.

Among those 20+, current and former sex workers experienced higher rates of suicide attempts.

Also, Chase Strangio, a female with a transgender identity who is a lawyer for the ACLU admitted this on the witness stand as part of her testimony:

STRANGIO: "What I think that is referring to is there is no evidence in some—in the studies that this treatment reduces completed suicide. And the reason for that is completed suicide, thankfully and admittedly, is rare and we’re talking about a very small population of individuals with studies that don’t necessarily have completed suicides within them."

The 41% suicide rates is nonsense it comes from a single ambiguous self selecting question in a survey of 27 people yes just 27 responses and only 13 were yes thats not even an indicative result its just useless.
Please look up professor applebys (sp) government report into trans suicide because its a myth

On the contrary. There is no 'fear' in my points. You are again using emotionally manipulative tactics to either convince others to agree with you or to make excuses not to consider other people's points.

That you cannot once consider the negative impact on female people in being coerced or forced through policy to accept male people as female is important for others to understand and to see.

The fact that my points are entirely rational and are not influenced by your emotional reasoning is rather the point. Whether you choose to acknowledge the harms that female people experience because they are being coerced into accepting male people as female people and to treat them as being female people doesn't mean those harms did not or do not happen. They abide, just like material reality.

OH WOW!

Yep its taken months and far too many lawsuits but the dominoes are beginning to fall🥳

The message from professionals who work with people with severe mental health issues that I have read, (ie. not a message from me) is to make sure to understand the difference between self reported suicide attempts and suicidality.

There is a very concerning issue where suicide has been misused in relation to people with transgender identities.

As Professor Winston reminded us years ago now, also be very careful about suicide mentions because without a whole lot of context around that discussion, it could be that people are using suicide attempts after treatment and affirming care has been given to justify treatment and affirming care. Which is a very dangerous misuse.

My advice (and this is from me) to any person looking at suicide data that has been presented is to look at each of the studies and understand the data. And if it is a self selected questionnaire from a group of heavily invested respondents, their reports on suicidality needs to never be taken as being a basis for a very important decision or setting policy. The bias, or simple misunderstanding of what is being asked, in those questionnaires will be very high.

So another threat of a lawsuit has forced an organisation to finally get independent legal advice which seems to then result in a change in policy....

If I use emotional language, it's probably because there is an emotional toll to these decisions, which trans people and their families are disproportionately paying. And because your questions genuinely seemed to come from a place of fear to me.

There is no implicit harm or coersion in accepting others as they are.

What is the harm to my children's friends in Brownies? Most of them know her gender identity and/or don't care, because they are children and they'd rather play. As children. My daughter is not erasing anyone, she is taking part in a positive, community activity. I'd argue there's more harm in her abruptly having to leave the group - we are already now not planning on attending sessions this week.

Your points seem keen to constantly reduce all social interactions between people to their sex organs, which I do find incredibly irrational.

Thank you for the statistics, I'll have a look - will take me a while!

Great news. Well done to FWS for bringing about this change, and every woman who spoke up on it.

"There is no implicit harm or coersion in accepting others as they are."

I agree. There is no implicit harm in accepting a male person to be a male person regardless of the fact that they may feel they they are not a male person. A male person is what they are, they are not a female person.

"What is the harm to my children's friends in Brownies? Most of them know her gender identity and/or don't care, because they are children and they'd rather play. As children. My daughter is not erasing anyone, she is taking part in a positive, community activity. I'd argue there's more harm in her abruptly having to leave the group - we are already now not planning on attending sessions this week."

Again, you have only taken the view that you wish to take. Have you ever asked one of the girls who was not your child's friend how they felt about having a boy in Brownies? What toilet did your child use, was it a female toilet or a male toilet or a unisex toilet?

You have made many assumptions on behalf of children that are not your own. You have no idea whether a female child there felt uncomfortable and felt she could not say a thing to you, the child's mother who I believe was a leader at the group.

"Your points seem keen to constantly reduce all social interactions between people to their sex organs, which I do find incredibly irrational."

I have not reduced all social interactions to their sex organs. I believe in using accurate language that reflects the sex class of a person. YOU have just reduced the discussion to 'sex organs'.

Again, I have seen this tactic used many times in discussions. It is a tactic to shame people who don't agree with you, whether you intended to be a tactic or not. Perhaps you spend a lot of time around people or listening to people who use these tactics and you use them unintentionally.

You find my language and discussion points 'incredibly irrational'? Because I choose to use established English language conventions to speaking with accuracy on a topic so that people don't get confused. And I discuss safeguarding issue using language that I hope is clear?

Do you really mean that discussions on safeguarding with clear language is 'incredibly irrational'? Or is this just another accusation from you while you deny the needs of female children?